If you don't already have a SATA hard drive that you want to install, buy one before proceeding. You'll generally want to buy a hard drive made by the same company which made your computer e. Some hard drives aren't compatible with certain computers.
Before buying a hard drive for your computer, search for your computer's model and the hard drive's name e. Turn off and unplug your computer. You should never attempt to alter your computer's internal components while the computer is running, as you may seriously harm both yourself and the computer. Some desktop computers will take a couple of minutes to finish running after unplugging them. If this is the case for your computer, wait until the computer's fans have stopped running before proceeding.
Open your computer's case. This process will vary from desktop computer to desktop computer, so consult your computer's manual or online documentation for specific instructions if you don't already know how to open the case.
You'll usually need a Phillips-head screwdriver for this step. This will prevent accidental damage to your computer's sensitive internal parts e. Find an empty mounting space.
Your primary hard drive will be mounted in a rack that's somewhere in the computer's case; there should be a similar, empty rack near the hard drive. This is where your second hard drive will go. Slide your second hard drive into the mounting space. It should fit under or next to the primary hard drive, with the cable side of the hard drive facing you. In some cases, you'll have to tighten the mounting space with screws.
Find the hard drive attachment point. Follow the current hard drive's cable all the way down to where it plugs into the motherboard, which is a green panel with circuits on it. If the hard drive's cable resembles a ribbon, your current hard drive is an IDE-type hard drive; you'll most likely need an adapter to plug the second hard drive into the motherboard. Attach your second hard drive. Make sure that one end of the second hard drive's cable is firmly plugged into the second hard drive, then plug the other end of the cable into the motherboard.
It should fit into a slot next to the primary hard drive's cable. If your computer's motherboard only supports IDE connections, the slot on the motherboard will be a couple of inches wide.
You can buy a SATA to IDE adapter that plugs into this slot, at which point you can plug your hard drive's cable into the adapter's back. Attach the second hard drive to the power supply. Plug one end of the second hard drive's power cable into the power supply box, then plug the other end into your second hard drive. You'll usually find the power supply at the top of the computer case. The power supply cable resembles a wider SATA cable. Make sure that all of the connections are tight.
If your second hard drive isn't properly plugged in, your computer won't be able to recognize it later. Plug in and turn back on the computer. Now that your second hard drive is physically installed, you'll need to allow Windows to recognize the hard drive. Open the Disk Management window.
Wait for the "Initialize Disk" window to appear. This window will usually appear within a few seconds of opening Disk Management. If the "Initialize Disk" window doesn't appear, click the grey "Refresh" button that's above the Layout tab near the top of the window. Click OK when prompted. This will allow Windows to initialize the second hard drive. Once this process completes, you can proceed. Make your second hard drive usable. Right-click the second hard drive's name, click New Simple Volume Your hard drive will be set up and made readable by Windows.
Once this process completes, you'll be able to access your second hard drive from the This PC app. Method 2. Buy an external hard drive. You'll generally want to buy an external hard drive that both has enough space for you and comes from a reliable manufacturer such as Western Digital or Seagate. Attach the external hard drive to your computer. Click This PC. It's on the left side of the window.
Select your external hard drive's name. Click your external hard drive's name below the "Devices and drives" heading in the middle of the This PC window. The external hard drive's name will usually contain the name of the manufacturer or the model of hard drive. Click Manage. It's a tab in the upper-left corner of the window. A toolbar will appear below this tab.
Click Format. This option is on the left side of the Manage toolbar. Doing so prompts a pop-up window. Select a format. Click Start. It's at the bottom of the window. Doing so confirms your decision and allows Windows to begin formatting the hard drive.
Read this post to get a step-by-step guide. In addition, with MiniTool Partition Wizard , you can back up your data and manage your hard drive better.
For whatever reason, you need to install a second hard drive into your laptop or desktop PC. If you just use the second drive to store photos, documents, etc.
However, some of you may prefer to install a second internal hard drive, not an external hard drive, because of the following defects you have to face when installing an external hard drive:. Based on the above factors, I would like to introduce how to install a second hard drive inside the computer, instead of installing an external hard drive.
To install a second hard drive, please keep reading to get the main points. Before installing a second hard drive, you should figure out two things: is your computer suitable to install a second hard drive, and which hard drive is right for your computer? Let's explore them one by one. Kindly Reminder: The improper disassembly may cause damage to your computer and make your computer not boot. Please back up your data first. You can use MiniTool Partition Wizard to do that.
Click here to get the detailed guide. Free Download. Generally speaking, a desktop is always suitable for a second hard drive or even more, because it is usually equipped with more than one hard drive bay. However, not all laptops are suitable to install a second hard drive. Some laptops have only one hard drive bay, which means it can install only one hard drive.
Therefore, before you buy a second hard drive for your laptop, you should check the number of the hard drive bays in your laptop. Step 2: Turn the notebook over to make the bottom side up. Then, remove the battery. Step 3: Find the location of the hard drive, and then use a cross screwdriver to unscrew the screws that fasten the cover. If your computer has more than one hard drive bay or an extra optical drive bay, you can decide which kind of hard drive you want to install. However, to some extent, that is also determined by the hard drive bay.
In general, the hard drive bay determines the following three factors of the new hard drive:. Interface: The socket build-in the hard drive determines the interface of the second hard drive, because the socket needs to match the interface. Here are some common hard drive interfaces and the corresponding sockets for personal computers. You can check which hard drive interface is right for your computer according to the socket.
Nowadays, IDE interface is gradually being phased out because of its slow data transfer rate. You can only see it in a very old computer. This interface is usually used in SSDs. B key has 5 pins and M key has 6 pins. On the market, there are few M. All you need is to press the power button to restart your computer and enter the next guide to set up the second hard drive.
To make your hard drive showing up and detected correctly in your computer, you need to initialize the disk, setting up a correct partition style, and create partitions on your disk. EaseUS Partition Master with its New Disk Guide feature makes it easy and simple for you: partition hard drive and initialize disk at the same time.
Once the customization is done, click "Proceed". By doing so, you'll get several volumes that share equal capacity on the disk, for example, 2 GB volumes on a GB disk.
After creating volumes on the new disk, you may stop here. But if you need to make use of the hard drive, follow the next guide for help. Here, we collected two types of needs and offered respective tips to help you make use of the second hard disk. If you tend to use the second hard drive as a data disk, you can now copy and paste large files into the second disk.
For honing the best way to transfer large files, EaseUS Todo PCTrans now update the large file cleanup function, supporting moving files large than 20MB to another drive partition root and custom directories. See how does it work. Note that if your OS drive is logically too small, the other way to release its stress is to move the installed programs to a second hard drive.
On this page, we offered a complete guide, showing you the complete process of adding a new second disk on your Windows computer:.
To simplify the whole process, we applied EaseUS partition manager software - Partition Master to help you initialize the disk and partition it in a quick guide.
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